Facebook's Revenue Soars 61% On Mobile Ads

Facebook found its mobile mojo this past quarter, reporting earnings Wednesday of $0.42 per share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $2.91 billion -- up 61% from the year-ago quarter, thanks to its mobile ad business.

Mobile daily active users grew by nearly 40%, compared with the prior year's quarter --  up more than 650 million on average in June 2014, the company reported.

"We had a good second quarter," stated Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "Our community has continued to grow, and we see a lot of opportunity ahead as we connect the rest of the world."

The mobile business continues to boom, pushing Facebook into the No. 2 position when it comes to earning mobile advertising dollars. It holds 22% of the mobile ad market, second only to Google's 50%. Twitter has slightly more than 2% of the same market.

eMarketer estimates that Facebook will increase worldwide mobile market share to 22.3% this year, up from 18% of worldwide mobile ad spending in 2013, and 5.37% in the prior year. The worldwide mobile ad market totaled $17.71 billion in 2013 and should reach $32.71 billion in 2014.

In the U.S., Facebook accounted for 15.8% of all mobile ad dollars spent last year, per eMarketer. The data firm believes its share in the U.S. will reach 18.4%.

Recent steps by Facebook to test a buy button signal a move into online retail, but also support lead generation and ad targeting. eMarketer estimates that U.S. ecommerce will reach $304.1 billion in 2014. Mobile commerce will account for 19% of all ecommerce sales this year, or $57.79 billion.

Mobile isn't the only ad business growing for Facebook. Overall, Facebook accounted for 5.8% share of worldwide digital ad revenue in 2013, up from 4.10% in 2012, and is expected to reach nearly 8% by the end of this year, per eMarketer.

In April 2014, Facebook gave a new look to Atlas, the ad-serving and measurement platform acquired from Microsoft. In the year since Facebook bought the company, it formed an insights team dedicated to understanding and working to solve big challenges in measuring ad performance. 

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